What is Children First, Offenders Second?

The 1980s decade of diversion in UK youth justice consolidated critiques of iatrogenic systemic contact and generated an abolitionist momentum that was significantly reversed by the 1990s punitive turn and ‘new youth justice’ strategies of modernisation, expansionism, interventionism and risk management. However, the tentative rejection of risk management and the rebirth of diversion in contemporary youth justice offer new hope for abolitionist arguments. This article critically evaluates contemporary abolitionist arguments, asserting that Children First definitions and diversionary, Bureau model responses could coalesce to form an innovative paradigm to replace traditional, formal conceptions of youth justice ‘systems’.

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Youth Work and Social Pedagogy

Working with Young People ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190937768.003.0010 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 149-167

Author(s):

Howard Williamson ◽

Mick Conroy

Keyword(s):

Work Practice ◽

Youth Work ◽

Young Offenders ◽

Political Climate ◽

Youth Justice ◽

Social Pedagogy ◽

Effective Interventions ◽

Justice Model ◽

First Offenders ◽

Children First

The most visible differentiation between models of youth justice across Europe exists in tensions between welfare-based and justice-based approaches. Proponents of welfare-based interventions often find themselves conflicted by the current growth of a right-wing, nationalistic, and perhaps at times xenophobic political climate throughout Europe, calling for tougher sanctions and sentences for young offenders. As a consequence, the promotion of any primarily welfare-based approaches within youth justice settings throughout Europe has been slow to emerge within key strategies to develop effective interventions with young offenders. This chapter explores the merits of a youth justice model that embraces the “children first—offenders second” approach, and it examines the potential role that a hybrid model of youth work practice and social pedagogy theory might play in achieving one of the key principles of the Council of Europe: integrating young offenders back into society, and not their marginalization and social exclusion.

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